Secretary of State Scott Gessler on Tuesday announced that a petition submitted on behalf of Americans Elect has been found sufficient — qualifying the nonpartisan organization as a new minor political party in the state.

Americans Elect — created to provide voters with an alternative way to nominate a presidential candidate in 2012 — submitted thousands of signatures to the secretary of state’s office this month, hoping to secure a line on next year’s ballot.

Representatives from the nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., turned in 17,954 signatures to the office. Of that total, 12,191 were deemed sufficient. Under state law, a petition to qualify as a minor political party must contain at least 10,000 valid signatures of registered Colorado voters.

Americans Elect is in the process of reaching its goal of attaining ballot access in all 50 states. To achieve that, it must gather signatures and meet ballot-access requirements in each of the states, which possess different laws.

Over the next few weeks, Gessler will update the online voter registration and the state’s voter-registration forms to include the new minor-political-party designation.

A native of Colorado, Kurtis Lee was a politics reporter for The Denver Post from February 2011 until July 2014. He graduated cum laude from Temple University in 2009 with a degree in journalism and political science. He previously worked as an online writer in Washington, D.C., for the PBS NewsHour.

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